Thursday, December 19, 2013

As Flannery O’Connor often does in her work, “The Train”
puts you in the head of a character that feels absolutely certain about his
convictions, so certain that his views of the world can be nothing else but
stilted and convoluted. This time the title character comes in the form of Haze,
Haze from Eastrod, Tennessee. Eastrod means something to him, and he affirms this
fact over and over, uttering it mentally and verbally in an effort to both earn
respect and goad the train’s negro porter into a state of fear: “I was raised
in Eastrod, Eastrod Tennessee; he thought about the porter again. He was going
to ask the porter… the porter would know Eastrod” (O’Connor 55-56). Yet, as
mentioned above, O’Connor delves into Haze’s uncertainties. At one moment he
loves the women he is to share a car with as she is chatting his ear off, the
next he loathes her, only to soon have a reversal of fortunes. Likewise, in his
memories, his mother always started conversations only to later, when he
loathes his travel-mate, be characterized as the exact opposite.

Haze thus exemplifies characters that dot O’Connor's
literature, ones with no certain home, no certain realm, and an overall lack of
personal understanding despite their thoughts to the contrary. They are
uniquely honest and human, just like the reader, and this quality draws one in,
forcing us to acknowledge our own deficiencies. Adding to Haze’s problems comes
his overall lack of confidence—he wants to investigate the porter but is afraid
to go there, he wants to enter the dining car, but when told to wait feels a
wave of embarrassment that haunts him. All eyes are on him, judging, condemning,
looking down on the man from Eastrod, because he is from Eastrod: “He ordered
the first thing on the menu, and when it came, ate it without thinking what it
might be. The people he was sitting with had finished and, he could tell, were
waiting, watching him eat” (59). These people are most likely not only ignoring
Haze, but probable would have cared about his presence only enough to start
casual conversation.

As expected, Haze is to confront the porter multiple times,
and in doing so, he is to question the man, probing his past, trying to see if
he is related to Cash from Eastrod. In Haze’s mind, this fact is a resounding
yes. The porter must be Cash’s kin, must be his son, and due to this fact, the
confrontation displays a moment one expects from O’Connor, where the title
character, feeling all high and mighty, is ripped from their throne and tossed
into a sea of uncertainty. It is with this feeling that the piece culminates,
leaving the reader uncertain as to fate of Haze, his mother, the porter, and
little Eastrod.

Favorite lines: “The way things happened, one thing right
after another, it seemed like time went by so fast, you couldn’t tell if you
were old or young. She looked as if it had been cheating her, going double
quick when she was asleep and couldn’t watch it” (55). It exhibits the grace
that O’Connor often has and works to keep common idioms fresh and new.

“He wanted it all dark, he didn’t want it diluted” (61). The
line resonates, speaks to Haze’s mindset while giving a strong physical
description of the setting.

“The tracks curved and he fell back sick into the rushing
stillness of the train” (62).

Saturday, December 14, 2013

Post six of my trip through Flannery O’Connor The Complete Stories concentrates on
“The Turkey.” This piece is number five of six of O’Connor’s master’s thesis from
the Iowa Writers Workshop and thus stands without the polish and pizazz that
would make her famous, a fact that perhaps accounts for why the piece never saw
print in her lifetime.

As with the other pieces in this section of O’Connor’s work,
“The Turkey” seems to diverge slightly from the other thesis pieces, showing a
different side to the writer, different subject matter, age groups, and events,
while covering convergent themes. Here, we have what seems like to be a western
style showdown at the start, a dual to end it all, but in actuality, we find the
main character, a boy named Ruller facing not a man, but a turkey. Ruller, who
often lives in and occupies a fantasy world, pursues the bird. The turkey,
which walks with a limp, stands as Ruller’s goal—to catch the bird will mean
respect and success, to fail will mean personal failure, failure that others
may not discover, but will haunt him.

This prospect of failure rings true through much of O’Connor’s
work. Her characters strive to find a place, a home, and a niche. Yet, it is
this exact pursuit that pushes a Lucynell Crater into a roadside diner in “The
Life You Save May Be Your Own” or plagues Old Dudley of “The Geranium” as he focuses on a flower pot
for safety. Everyone wants and needs a
place, and the journey to get there can reveal one’s true character. Here, Ruller
tackles the task to prove his worth, to make his friends understand that he is
capable of monumental tasks: “He guessed they’d be knocked out when they saw
him; he guessed they’d talk about him in bed” (O’Connor 44). Yet, Ruller lives
in this dream world, not reality. Reality is he is a boy, one who doesn’t have
a gun and haphazardly chases the bird. Reality is that he is driven by his
hopes, slamming through hedges and into trees as he rips his shirt, scratching
and scrapping his body.

Each setback, represents the fact that Ruller is further
from his goal, not closer. The turkey can and will elude him just as he can and
will elude the directions of his parents and his mother’s drive from him to
refrain from taking the Lord’s name in vain. Regardless of how close he will
come, Ruller will be haunted by the idea that his actions will never be enough,
that his life will be partially empty, and that his scars will be his only
prize in the end.

Favorite lines: “he strained his eyes to the ground to see
if there was a stone near, but the ground looked as if it might have been swept”
(42). Love the imagery in this one.

“He said them again but the laughing had gone out” (47).
Great flow and ideas here.

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Chuck Palahniuk’s latest literary creation (beyond Doomed)
comes in the form of a short story called “Zombies,” available free here (you may not want to open the link at work,
the story has been published by Playboy, the link is clean though). As
Palahniuk often does, the story focuses the social complexities of modern life
calling foul where need be as he is painfully honest to those who wish to deny
the truth of life, all with his unique brand of humor.

The topic this time is the life and times of high school
students. The piece does not focus on drama, but rather digs
into the scholastic and parental expectations of our era. Specifically, Palahniuk explores the pressures
placed on teenagers as they are pushed to excel socially, academically,
athletically, and artistically in an effort to get into the right college, a
college that will theoretically push them into the right job, a job that subsequently
slots them appropriately on the ladder of life, yielding lifelong success. In theory
this success would extend to their offspring and so on. Of course this idea is
not uniquely American, but it is a common story, a common situation. The narrator
of “Zombies” notes rather quickly how the idea heaps stress on the teens, and
they respond by either plowing through adversity or buckling.

Yet the teens in the narrative almost uniformly opt to leave the game
and become Zombies of a sort. Do not expect the undead here, expect characters
that instead have become fully alive through elective lobotomy by way of a defibrillator
to the head. These teens shock away their problems, forgetting the stress and yielding
to the temptation to give up. Instead of focusing on grades, they elect to go
the way of reality celebrities: they want to be mindless slugs focused only on
the pleasures of life without taking a moment to endure the troubles that come
along with it. They figure if Honey Boo Boo and Kim Kardashian can be rich,
famous, and mostly carefree, why can’t they too have a ticket to easy street?
It is in this vein that the protagonist confronts his personal decision on
whether to end it all and become a member of the mindless or endure a life
based on reality. While I won’t reveal the situation or detail each step of the
trip the reader takes to get there, I will note that Palahniuk does not
disappoint as he pulls the reader through the narrative.

Below is a rough recording of Chuck Palahniuk reading the story on a promotional tour. I did not record this, I only found it on the web: